BY NORM DIXON
On October 7, US President George Bush announced that the shooting war component of the US military's "Operation Enduring Freedom" was underway. But perhaps a more apt title for the US war on Afghanistan would be Operation Enduring Hypocrisy.
The United States, Bush declared, "is an enemy of those who aid terrorists and of the barbaric criminals who profane a great religion by committing murder in its name... If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves."
A central goal of the massive strikes on Afghanistan by the US and British governments in the days following October 7 is to help bring to power a regime made up of Afghanistan's chronically fratricidal warlords — people who have a long history of killing "innocents" and perpetrating terrorism in the name of religion. The hypocrisy doesn't end there: for more than a decade, Washington sponsored these terrorists and is doing so again.
For all Bush's pious words about defeating "evil-doers" and terrorists, and British PM Tony Blair's two-faced lamentations about the oppression of the Afghan people under the Taliban regime, the policy of the US-dominated war coalition boils down to replacing "their" religious fanatic terrorists with "our" religious fanatic terrorists. In effect, it will be a Taliban Mark II regime.
Northern Alliance
In a ridiculously uneven contest, US warplanes have dropped thousands of tonnes of bombs on Afghanistan. US warships, and US and British submarines, in the Arabian Sea launched 65 or so cruise missiles in the first two nights of the attack.
The Taliban's "air force" of 30 1960s-era jet fighters and helicopters, and its air fields and rudimentary air defence and radar systems were pulverised. On the third day of the attacks, US warplanes concentrated on Taliban artillery positions, tanks and troops near the northern town of Mazar-i Sharif, which is under military pressure from anti-Taliban Northern Alliance (NA) forces.
US warplanes were never under any serious threat from the Taliban's ramshackle air force and anti-aircraft defences. But, while the Taliban's antiquated aircraft are useless against Washington's air power, for many years they have been a potent weapon against the NA.
A key military goal of the attacks was to disable and disrupt the Taliban's capacity to respond to the NA push on Mazar-i Sharif that is likely to follow the US air raids. With US air superiority quickly achieved, the Taliban will be unable to move reinforcements or supplies north by road or air.
The capture of Mazar-i Sharif will open supply routes for the NA to the Uzbekistan border. Presently, the NA's main source of supplies is Tajikistan, much further away and much more unreliable.
The NA controls around 5% of northern Afghanistan, along the border with Tajikistan, as well as some pockets in the east near Kabul and in the west near Herat. It has around 15,000 fighters, divided between several factions and militia, and draws its support almost entirely from Afghanistan's minority Uzbek, Tajik and Shiite Hazara communities. The NA has until recently received the bulk of its funds and arms from Russia and Iran.
US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated on October 7 that the attacks were designed to "change the military balance over time" between the ruling Taliban and the NA, anti-Taliban "tribes" in the south and factions within the Taliban itself.
On October 9, he elaborated further: "Let there be no doubt, those elements on the ground — the tribes in the south, the NA, elements within Taliban that are anti-al Qaeda — we're here encouraging them. We would like to see them succeed. We would like to see them heave the al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership, that has been so repressive, out of that country ... We are working with elements on the ground that are interested in overthrowing and expelling that group of people."
Rumsfeld did not rule out providing NA forces in the north with US air cover. It has been reported that at least 50 US commandos are with them.
The September 23 London Sunday Times reported that British SAS troops travelling with NA guerillas inside Afghanistan were fired at by Taliban troops on September 21. The Sunday Times added that MI6 and CIA operatives were then already inside Afghanistan with the rebels.
At least 2000 US special forces troops are in Uzbekistan awaiting deployment inside Afghanistan, most likely with NA forces in the north and west. Washington gave rebel commanders advance notice of when and where the US war planes would attack and are consulting with them about the timing and location of any offensives they may launch.
Washington is also sending arms to NA forces. According to Philip Smith, US representative of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the NA commander who is nearest Mazar-i Sharif, Washington has paid for the provision of old Soviet weapons from Uzbekistan.
Split the Taliban
Rumsfeld and other Western coalition leaders have been carefully choosing their words so as to make it clear that there will be a place in the post-Taliban regime for "elements within the Taliban that are anti-al Qaeda".
While the anti-Taliban NA will undoubtedly play a big role if this grand scheme succeeds, Washington and London — with help from Pakistan's military dictatorship — are working behind the scenes to bribe or coerce senior Taliban commanders and allies into joining an "anti-terrorist", pro-Western government.
Because of the influence that Iran and Russia have had over the NA factions — as well as the fact that it largely excludes forces that represent the 40-50% of Afghans from the Pashtun ethnic group, which is concentrated in the south and east — the US, Britain and Pakistan, Washington's prodigal regional ally, are opposed to a post-Taliban regime dominated by the NA.
The October 10 Washington Post reported that in the south and east of the country, "where the ruling Taliban is most deeply rooted in the local ethnic Pashtun community, CIA agents have launched an effort to win the loyalty of dissident Taliban commanders through the use of money or fear, administration officials said... The clandestine wooing of commanders, tribal leaders and village elders [is taking place] in the broad swath of Afghanistan from Jalalabad in the east to Kandahar in south."
A former CIA officer "with extensive experience in Afghanistan" told the Post that the only practical strategy for ousting the Taliban is to "peel off" Pashtun tribal leaders and Taliban commanders. "These are rented relationships — if you have common grounds, common interests, you can do something for a few bucks", he confided.
The goal of splitting the Taliban commanders from their top leaders explains why US warplanes have avoided targeting concentrations of Taliban troops in the south in the opening days of bombing. Instead, high-tech 2300 kilogram "bunker-buster" bombs were launched at places where Washington suspects top Taliban leaders are holed up.
The NA has also complained that US provisions of arms has come too late and in insufficient quantities. Washington has apparently refused Dostum's request for Soviet-built tanks from Uzbekistan and other heavy weapons.
The October 11 Washington Post noted that "the US offensive has avoided a total assault of Taliban forces ... that the opposition Northern Alliance has sought... Bush administration officials said they remain wary of handing a military advantage to just one group in Afghanistan's fractious political mix... 'Throwing our weight too obviously and overtly in favour of the alliance might achieve a near-term goal, but in the long term, it could lead to more instability'."
In a second article in the same edition, the Washington Post reported that the NA had agreed to delay an offensive against Taliban forces in Kabul until an "interim government" can be established.
"In a bid to forestall any advance by the rebels into Kabul, US and Pakistani officials said, the United States and Britain are holding off aerial bombardments against thousands of Taliban and Arab troops arrayed in defensive lines on the plains north of the capital", the Post reported.
The Post quoted a Pakistani military official saying: "US forces have not targetted Taliban artillery and other military hardware. Hitting the Taliban artillery now [would] mean giving the Northern Alliance a walkover."
The October 12 British Independent also reported that Washington is resisting requests from the NA to launch attacks on Taliban gun emplacements on the ridge above the rebel-controlled Bagram airfield, about 38 kilometres north of Kabul. Until the Taliban guns are neutralised, the NA cannot use the airport to replenish their forces. Without that, an offensive on Kabul is not possible.
Loya Jirga
To bring the unlikely Taliban-NA coalition into being, Washington and London are promoting the idea that the former king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, return from exile to convene a traditional tribal gathering, the Loya Jirga, from which will emerge a "broad-based" government with representatives of all Afghan factions opposed to "terrorism". The proposal also has the support of the Pakistan and Indian governments. Britain has also proposed that the UN run Afghanistan for a transitional period.
Zahir Shah was overthrown in a coup led by his cousin in July 1973. The big business mass media has attempted to paint the period prior to his overthrow as a "golden age" of peace and prosperity for Afghanistan. It was nothing of the kind.
The king was overthrown in an attempt by a section of the Afghan ruling class to head off mounting opposition to the monarchy by Afghan workers and peasants, resentful at the appalling living conditions most of them had to endure — average life expectancy was barely 40 years; 50% of children didn't live to their fifth birthday; illiteracy was more than 90%; only 17% of school-age children attended school, and only 11% of those were female; women were barred from most urban employment and in the rural areas, women were still being sold into marriage; peasants were tied to their landlords through unpayable debt and per capita incomes were among the worst in the world.
It was these conditions that contributed to the 1978 uprising that brought the left-wing Peoples Democratic Party (PDPA) to power. And it was to maintain such dreadful conditions, that the brutal mujaheddin landlords rebelled against the progressive reforms of the PDPA government.